Featured Maps: I Didn't Expect That! (6 March 2010)

A friend recently expressed surprise that ANC-DFW is less than
200 miles (only 317 kilometers) farther than ANC-ORD.
Plotting the great circle routes helps visualize why:

Using an orthographic projection is even better for problems like this.
The orthographic projection, which depicts one hemisphere as seen from space
(mathematically, the perspective is from infinitely far away),
has the property that any great circle passing through the center
of the map is a straight line. Here's how ANC-ORD vs ANC-DFW
looks on this type of map:

My family holiday trip provides another example of a case where
the relative distances aren't what you'd expect. We went to London
for Christmas, flying SFO-LHR on Christmas Eve and returning LHR-LAX-SFO
on New Years Day. It seems like LHR-LAX should be shorter than LHR-SFO
but it isn't:

Many people enjoy using the Great Circle Mapper to help understand
geographical puzzles like this. Happy exploring!

Information on this site may not be accurate or current and is not valid for flight planning or navigation. No warranty of fitness for any purpose is made or implied. Flight planning and navigation should only be done using official charts.